Her new cookbook has a whole lot of happy in it.

Christina Tosi's Milk Bar bakeries can count Garance Doré and Hilary Rhoda as fans, and Karlie Kloss and Band of Outsiders as collaborators, but certainly the most interesting part about her sweet shops is their menu. There, Tosi details home-style delicacies like Crack Pie (a buttery, creamy pie filling on top of an oat cookie crust) and Compost Cookies (a sweet-salty combination of ingredients including coffee grounds, pretzels, butterscotch, and chocolate), all inventive and fight-your-roommate-for-the-last-one enough to make it obvious why she won the 2012 James Beard Rising Star Chef award, the Oscars equivalent for chefs.

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In addition to being a chef/co-owner at Milk Bar, Tosi is also the newest judge on FOX's hit TV shows MasterChef and MasterChef Junior, and as if she wasn't busy enough, Tosi's second cookbook, Milk Bar Life: Recipes and Stories, was released today. Here, ELLE.com caught up with Tosi about her new book, finding success in a male-dominated industry, and working with the infamous Gordon Ramsay on MasterChef.

Some of the recipes in Milk Bar Life are so impossibly simple, like the Hershey's Kiss Roll, which has only two ingredients (crescent rolls and Hershey's Kisses). Were you ever afraid of being perceived as too lowbrow as a chef?

Milk Bar Life is meant to be a retreat to simplicity and the hilarity of life through food. Momofuku Milk Bar [Tosi's first cookbook] has all of our multi-step, multi-technique recipes for the baker.

My curiosity and love for food started at an early age. My mother was a working mom, so I learned to whip up sweet and savory food using everyday pantry and grocery store ingredients that required little supervision.

I was always taught to be myself, be honest, and be true to my roots. I fell in love with the simplicity of food, and that was my gateway to bigger and better things. I am as in awe with the ridiculousness of Hershey's Kisses wrapped in store bought biscuit dough that I can make with little effort or technique as I am with a ten-course tasting menu at the finest restaurant in NYC. You can love and be inspired by both in different ways. That is the way I approach and am endeared by food and time spent in the kitchen. That is my approach, our approach to food at Milk Bar. We are both highbrow and low brow. It's important to be well rounded, know both ends of the spectrum, and embrace both!

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Photo by Gabriele Stabile and Mark Ibold. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

In the chapter 'A Cookie a Day' you talk about wanting to choose an unconventional career path after studying Italian and math in college. What made you take the leap into cooking?

I loved to bake as a child and through my teenage years. The matriarchs of my family loved to bake, and the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Baking became something I did every day, it became a time where my creative and nurturing side took stage. I'd bake sometimes 2 or 3 times a day, and quickly realized that it was the one thing I could imagine doing EVERY day for the rest of my life without tiring of or the prospect of boredom setting in. It is the most incredibly freeing feeling, when you find something you love to do. Once I realized it, nothing else mattered, the rest faded away, and I went for it. (I still use plenty of math, and a little Italian in my day to day, too.)

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At the very end of Milk Bar Life you talk about "The Milk Bar Sweat Down," which is when people, mostly men, mistake the women of Milk Bar for anything less than serious chefs and businesswomen. Can you talk a little more about your experience as a woman in pastry?

Both my mother and my older sister work in predominately male-centered industries. My mother grew up on a farm in Ohio alongside strong, fearless women. I am a product of that amazing female influence and strength. I discovered my calling, and I chased it down. It's not about making excuses, looking for acknowledgement or standing out because you're a woman. It's about staying focused and working hard to be the very best of who you are, male or female. Being an integrity-filled individual that crushes it, that is the most savvy, most team oriented, true person on the team, or in my case, in the kitchen. The rest comes, whether you're a female in a male dominated industry or a female in a female dominated industry.

It's about who you are as a person, as a professional. That will always overcome the climb up any professional ladder.

I've watched you on Mind of a Chef and Gordon Ramsay on Kitchen Nightmares and a few of his other shows. From a viewer's perspective, your leadership styles could not be more different. How was working with him and Graham Elliot, who were both existing judges on the show?

Both Gordon and Graham are amazing chefs, mentors, and leaders. We're all strong-minded individuals–that's crucial to the path of becoming a chef, but they're also incredibly respectful and humble when another opinion is presented. It's been a blast working with them on FOX's MasterChef and MasterChef Junior. We each bring a different perspective and guiding voice in the kitchen, which is essential. Through any industry, it's important to work with and for different personalities–each challenges you and pushes you in a different way. That's what makes a well rounded individual, prepared for and capable of it all!

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A lot of cooking shows do a decent job of balancing male and female judges, but very few include pastry chefs. Do you feel obligated to represent pastry chefs or female chefs because you're on TV?

My love is in the pastry field, but I worked for over a decade in restaurants, so I also have a pretty strong savory knowledge and background. I represent, first and foremost a strong pastry perspective on the show, but I can, and do, get in there with savory challenges and assessments, just like both Gordon and Graham do with pastry challenges.

I have worked my way up in the food industry being strong and steady about who I am as a person, first and foremost, as a chef and professional, and certainly as a woman. It's great to see the females on the show light up when they see a female judge walk in, but I'll tell you, I'm just as tough on them in the kitchen, as I am on any male home cook, that's how I lead at Milk Bar and my view as a chef. Skill, technique, humility, and integrity as a person is what will get you anything and everything you strive for in life.